Finally had another go, using VC++ 6 this time. Works much better, except for just a few errors:
error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "void __cdecl ship_start_animation_type(struct ship *,int,int,int)"
error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "public: __thiscall triggered_rotation::triggered_rotation(void)"
error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "int __cdecl match_animation_type(char *)"
error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "void __cdecl ship_animation_set_initial_states(struct ship *)"
error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "int __cdecl ship_get_animation_time_type(struct ship *,int,int)"
error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "void __cdecl submodel_trigger_rotate(struct model_subsystem *,struct ship_subsys *)"
Release/fs2_open_r.exe : fatal error LNK1120: 10 unresolved externals
Error executing link.exe.
The following environment variables were not found
$(FS2PATH)
There were actually several errors for each of those shown above, but weeded duplicates out for easier reading. Since the rest of the errors before were caused by missing dependancies, I assume these two are as well, but I simply can't seem to find out what. Anyone want to post a list of the dependacies on a working project so I can see what I'm missing? So close now and I'd really like to get this to work

Especially since I
know it should work with VC++ 6.
Windows Server 2003 R2 Platform SDK and DirectX 9 SDK (april 2006) are installed and linked.